How to make mexican food, the tortilla

    

Authentic Mexican Tacos

 In Mexico, corn consumption in form of tortillas has been part of our culture since ancestral times and it's the main component of Mexicans diet since centuries. A lot of people, chefs and restaurants in the world  are now trying to learn how to prepare Mexican food but, for being honest, they have nice approaches but they fail in the way of preparing it because they don't understand. How the tortilla is used?, How they can make it? or Why is so important?. It's a simple component but it's crucial to know how to manage it if you want to succeed making a Mexican Night with authentic food. 

First, we have to start with tortillas and here you'll learn something great - all the process to prepare your own corn dough from scratch. Also, I guarantee you that if you use your own dough the taste is going to be better and they are going to be more softer and flexible.

This recipe is traditional and historic because explains the process of "nixtamalización", which is a word in Náhuatl, the ancient Aztecs and other indigens language, nextli = ashes and tamali = dough so the meaning would be dough of ashes. 

This is a chemical process invented thousands of years ago which converts the corn into a healthy and complete food. The process consists in putting the corn kernels into water with lime, this process softens the corn, makes it easy to peel and gives a lot of properties to the corn.

This dough can be used to prepare tortillas, tostadas, totopos (nachos) and a lot of recipes that have corn as basic ingredient.

Corn made tortillas

About this recipe

Aztecs sharing meal

• It's easy to make but demands a lot of work, like almost all the mexican food
• For this recipee you'll need a corn mill
• You'll need lime, if it's possible purchase it in it's inactive chemical form
• The aproximate time is 13 hours because you'll need to leave all night the corn seeds inside the water
• This recipe is for 1/2 kgs of corn dough

Ingredients

Dried corn seeds

• 1/2 kgs of dried corn seeds

• 1 little spoon (1/2 oz) of lime in inactive chemical form.

Things that you'll need

Manual seeds mill

• 1 machine or mill to grind corn or seeds (for more info click here)
• 1 casserole with lid (for more info click here)
• 1 drainer (for more info click here)
• 1 strainer (for more info click here)
• 1 glass (250 ml)
• 1 spoon (2 oz)

Preparation Process

Clean the corn

Cleaned corn seeds

1. Clean the corn seeds to remove all the things that makes it ugly like little stones, insects, leafs or trash that you can find
2. Put the corn seeds in the drainer and clean them with fresh water
3. Put the drainer inside the casserole and cover them with water

The Cooking process

corn seeds cooking process

1. Fill 1/2 of the glass with water and put 1 little spoon (1 oz) of lime (calcium hydroxide) and if bubles are coming out wait until the bubbles stops. Important: This process is done to verify that the lime is inactive. If you see steam of bubbles it means that it is active, wait until the chemical reaction to finish transform the lime to inactive state.
2. Put the water with the lime, using the strainer, that you prepared and mix the ingredients
3. Boil the water at high heat
4. When the water is boiling reduce the intensity of the fire and leave the corn seeds cooking for 30 minutes until they get softer and move occasionally.
5. Turn of the fire, close the casserole and leave it 12 hours.

The next day...

Maiz Nixtamalizado

1. Verify that the corn seeds are softer and that you can peel them with just your fingers;if not leave the seeds more time. Do not leave the corn in the water for a longer time because they will become useles for the dough. This state of the corn is known as "comonixtamal" that would be "almost like the nixtamal"
2. Filter and clean the corn seeds with the strainer and fresh water. The liquid where the corn was cooked is known as "nejayote"
3. Peel the skin of all the corn seeds previously washed
4. Put the seeds in the mill
5. grind the corn seeds to get the dough

Tip. Is important to preserve the corn dough in a closed and hermetic recipient and leave it in a fresh and closed place.

Making the tortillas

Once you have the dough you can start using it to prepare tortillas totopos or tostadas here is a video of how to make "flour" tortillas which you can jump the process of preparing the "flour" because your tortillas are made of corn! they are better but the cooking process is the same. I'll make a video for that later but for now this one works well

I hope you can enjoy a good tortilla and eat just like our ancestors did thousands years ago, have a nice day and please leave comments or questions if you have some

Tortilla ancient preparation process

@luigitel180

The man that stopped the desert

He started in 1974 and the people thought that he was crazy. Yacouba Sawadogo took the responsibility of replant his region, by using the Zai, a traditional way of farming that was forgotten. His goal: Restore the agriculture in dry lands that were affected by the change of weather. Forty years later his effort worked out and was applied in eight more countries. More than 3 million of acres are now useful for agriculture.

     There are people which their  strong will and decision inspire respect. By the way they face the destiny and they fight fatality. Yacouba Sawadogo might not have all the solutions but his strong personality and clear objective helped to achieve his goal and become an inspiring person. In 1970 the people of Burkina Faso were being pushed away by the desert and the damage that was causing to its lands, this particular person has the strong objective of make the region useful for people. This means to achieve what seems impossible. He is decided to make plant seeds into a grown that is affected by the weather using a traditional technique of agriculture.

  By thinking a little bit about this man and his story it seems that the only impossible thing is to over come our own fears and mindset. Also that's not enough, he had the knowledge, a clear goal of what he wanted to achieve and he worked really hard, 40 years, to make his dream come to reality. In this sense it seems that the way to be successful is not rocket science. Why? Because the only thing that we need now is knowledge and in this knowledge era we have, technically, everything that we need to be successful in what we want.

    To conclude, I am not saying that suddenly the life is easier, life is hard and so hard that we all die to live it. What I am trying to say is that we only need to focus in what we really want and once we have the idea or the clear thought then by following simple but clear actions our goal has really high chances to become true.

    Finally, in this sense and expanding a little bit the concept of this person I would like to think, what each one of us could do the same that Mr. Yacouba did, I think we'll not have deforestation problems. 

    Well I hope you like this idea and I invite you to join my project, with ideas, thoughts, resources of "1 Árbol 1 persona" or "1 tree 1 soul" and join the concept I am trying to build

"A Poor man is the one that needs a lot to live..." - Jose 'Pepe' Mujica Persident of Uruguay

Hello,

I hope you are having a good day. Now I'm writing in English to make my post more accessible to the internet people that they understand more English than Spanish.

I have been always worried about my personal preparation, development and worried about my own limitations and how I can use all my strength and intelligence to be  a better person to achieve my own development, being able to make the right decisions being happy, being able to make the people around me aware of this also and if I have family or a couple make them happy too, give them the elements to achieve the same things that I am looking too, because at the end and from my perspective that is the real thing that matters in life. But first I have to start with myself

During this past months I've living in Germany and I can assure is one of the most relevant experiences of my life. I traveled to Egypt during their revolution time and now I'm in Colombia on a holiday trip visiting my girlfriend. I am the Information Manager Director of a non profit organization in Germany called AIESEC. In resume I am the IT guy. I have been working in technology since I have nine teen years old. I studied Telematics Engineering at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México, ITAM, and all my life I have been thinking that the solutions to all human problems are the knowledge, technology and the right distribution of this to every human being so that is why I decided to become an Engineer of Technology and I understood the world in this way. I also was worried in having a complete formation and that is why I decided to become a Scientific SCUBA diver and I got my degree in the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, UNAM. I practiced martial arts and oriental philosophy during ten years to have another perspective of how the things work. I also was worried in knowing my roots and country so I decided to travel from north to south and read about their most relevant cultures like the Mayans in the south east, the Aztecs in the center and the Yaquis in the north west and I understood that my country is unique and I do not know all about it. In my university I read about occidental philosophy and was part of the United Nations Model of my University ITAMMUN and the subject I took par was Sustainable Growth. Finally, all my life I've fully connected to the internet and is one of my passions I enjoy it's power and how fast the knowledge can travel through this powerful tool and also know the damage that is can cause to the others because I used to be a "friendly" hacker during my early ages. After all this I thought that I had a complete understanding of how world worked. This experiences transformed the way I see the world and now I know that I was wrong.

During this months I've thinking about the structure of the society, I've been reading the news, I witnessed the German Elections and I was asking my friend about their point of view and why they where voting for some specific candidate. Also the way of living of people from Europe is always challenging me because some of the things that they have I just never had them in my country and never though about them.

Now I feel that my perspective is more complete and I just can say that I still need a lot to learn about a lot of things in my life.

Why is all this personal history?

Well, today I was working, reading the news and I saw a post of a friend with a particular video. This video and post cached my attention because it was about sustainable growth, a subject that I've been interested since I think that I know what I want. 

The post was a critic for our modern society and all the speeches of the modern leaders through the times about this subject and after reading it I couldn't avoid to think. Man this is what I was always thinking off too so I was happy to see more people worried about the same thing I was worried about so I decided to write this and also to make a promise with myself that I will not be part of this modern society making small changes at the time. I don't know If I will be successful but I know that I can't live without trying it. Just the time will be able to tell me if i took the right decision.

Here are some fragments of the post (translated by me), also the video and the link:

"What would happen to the planet if the Indian people could have the same amount of cars per family that the Germans have? how much Oxygen we would have to breath?..." 

"Does the world has the elements, materials to make possible that 7,000, 8,000 million people can achieve the same rates of consumption and waste than the most opulent occidental societies have? is it possible? or we will need to have another type of discussion another day? Why we had to create this civilization? product of the  market, product of competition that has the definition of progress based on a portentous and explosive material..."

"The development can't be against the human happiness, it has to be in favor of happiness, love, human relationships, to take care of children, to have friends, to have the elemental things. That's why is the most important treasure that you can have. When we fight for the environment, the first element of the environment it's called human happiness..."

Fragment of José 'Pepe' Mujica's speech, President of Uruguay, during the Sustainable Growth Summit of United Nations in Brazil (Rio+20)

I hope that my post can move something inside of you to make you start the change because the change of this starts with each on of us

Have a nice day

Luis O